Woman’s ‘runny nose’ turns out to be brain fluid leak

OMAHA, Neb. – When Kendra Jackson first got the runny nose, she thought it was a cold symptom. But it continued for years, along with other symptoms including coughing, sneezing, and headaches.

“Everywhere I went I always had a box of Puffs, always stuffed in my pocket,” she tells KETV. “[It was] like a waterfall, continuously.”

Doctors told her it was likely just allergies, but she knew it was more. Now, finally, she has her answer: It was a brain fluid leak.

Jackson was diagnosed with the cerebrospinal fluid leak at Nebraska Medicine, and their use of all-caps in announcing her story on Facebook pretty much sums things up: “fluid FROM HER BRAIN WAS LEAKING OUT OF HER NOSE!”

Dr. Christie Barnes and the ENT team discovered Jackson was losing about a half-pint of cerebrospinal fluid per day through her nose. The team was able to go in through Jackson’s nose and use angled cameras and instruments to use Jackson’s fatty tissue to plug up the hole between her skull and nostrils that was allowing the leak.

Jackson notes that the symptoms started a couple years after she suffered head trauma in a 2013 car accident, hitting her face on the dashboard. Before the surgery, “I couldn’t sleep, I was like a zombie,” Jackson tells KETV. Now, “I don’t have to carry around the tissue anymore, and I’m getting some sleep.”